What are they used for? I saw from some of the following messages that they are used as brushes. Is there another use for them?
Thanks 
you have to use the experimental version and then activate vertex colors in the 3dview in the sculpt mode
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Sorry, this was meant for @myway880
Vector displacement maps are just that, displacement maps. The use vector data instead of simple height data so you can get directional displacement that you can’t get with traditional displacement maps, and because of this you can use them with a very low poly base mesh.
They have been around for over a decade and I think they were created at Pixar. Mudbox has had them for a very long time and Zbrush introduced them as brushes quite recently.
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It’s just one of those things - you gotta make a crocodile or lizard creature, make a bunch of VDM brushes thinking “boi, that’ll come in handy”. Fast forward 5 years you never used them once since.
Meanwhile FX and rigging is screaming at you to rather give them geometry cause of collisions and simming.
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The only two use cases I’m familiar with are using them with brushes (as alphas or stencils), or full-mesh VDMs just like regular displacement maps. As @Musashidan says a VDM is essentially just a regular DM except it supports displacement on any vector (instead of Z-only) which allows for overhanging geometry. Take a look at the first .gif from this right click select proposal: https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/JQfbbc/
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Dobarro has said multiple times that the patch for the vector displacement brushes is ready, he said that a year ago or so, but he will commit it when we have bake to get vector displacement maps, and idk who is in charge of the bake but it is not him and that could slow the development of other things that he is doing, that’s why .
Edit: baking 2.92
https://developer.blender.org/tag/render_cycles/
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Its not slow development its just that they are busy with other areas. For baking usually the one for the render engine is responsible for that and its planned for 2.92… You found it…
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I can wait a couple of months more, just remember them to add vector displacement maps for the 2.92 next year 
thank you blender friend
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Cannot see the media. Maybe because I’ve updated to Catalina? I see hearts down there so it must be that…
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This comes along the same time as a proposal to use Vector Displacement as brush in sculpt, and I can only hope this means we will be able to bake our own brushes very soon and use them this way 
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The VDM baking script can be downloaded now:
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Hmm, the latest 2.9 alpha build is dated on July 5th. I’ve asked in Blender.chat when the next build will appear.
When the build failure is removed.
https://builder.blender.org/admin/#/
In fact it’s just one build behind. 
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Developer J F Matheu is making some pretty rad improvements to his Sculpt: Atelier add-on…
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Not sure if it’s been posted yet, but this is pretty cool - https://github.com/Mainman002/TMG-Shape-Layers-Panel (A blender addon for sculpting with shape keys as layers. )
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OK, I’ve split the radial array discussion to a separate thread. Feel free to continue the discussion there if desired, thanks.
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